Interest in reflective practices, within the broader framework of teachers' professional knowledge, has been ongoing in educational research for the past few decades. The idea from which reflection itself stems is that of teachers' agency in their own professional development. The initial positivist approach viewed the relationships between…

Many developed countries have been concentrating lately on the quality of preschool education. Generally, what is considered one of the most important aspects of quality preschool education is quality teaching performance, which has been focused on in many research studies. Research also investigates the level of reflection in preschool teachers,…

The research aims at a specific analysis of how learning analytics as a metacognitive tool can be used as a method by teachers as reflective professionals and how it can help teachers learn to think and come down to decisions about learning design and curriculum, learning and teaching process, and its success. Not only does it build on previous…

Portfolios are widely used to document and assess professional development in tertiary teaching. This paper examines a self-reflective approach to critically evaluating practice and developing an evidence-based teaching portfolio through an emergent, evolving continuum of initial, life-story biography, evocative auto-ethnography and, finally,…

Teacher reflection is a central component of developing preservice and practicing teachers. This article describes a case study designed to explore reflection through an examination of a metacognitive tool, the Teacher Learning Instrument. The findings provide insight into the dimensions of reflection, specifically the interplay of observation and…

Teaching is a highly complex and political endeavour, and as teachers we need to be courageous as we support children to make sense of the increasingly complex and diverse societies that we live in. My doctoral research highlighted a number of issues related to teachers and curriculum. "Te Whariki," the Aotearoa New Zealand early…

In this paper we examine two systematic observation methods intended to be used by pre-service and in-service teachers to help increase their awareness of children's participation in productive classroom dialogue. We identify the affordances of these methods for supporting teachers' reflective practice, focusing in this case on students' equitable…

The systematization of a relevant experience such as the training of 21 in-service teachers with the use of an action-research component was aimed at documenting and writing what happened, as well as explaining the results achieved as a result of the intervention. The aim was to interpret the experience critically, to learn from it and improve…

This article explores the self-reflection and introspection practised by Korean teachers in early childhood institutions from the perspective of "Won"-Buddhism. With a phenomenological research methodology, it observes the internalised dialogue experienced by teachers while writing a 'mind diary' to reflect on the emotions, thoughts,…

My aim in this essay is to wonder "where" in the world I am now as a scholar of place and a lover of places, and to give some shape to where I have been. I begin by reflecting on how I came to discover that "place" matters--at a historical moment (the 1990s) in which academic interest in place surged. Next, I address some of…

This study used a multiple case study design to explore the occurrence of pivotal teaching moments, teachers' responses to these moments, and teachers' own perceptions of the impact of these moments on their own knowledge development. The participants were six practicing secondary mathematics teachers. The researcher collected data from teacher…

Novice teachers of color (TOC) in predominantly White programs of teacher preparation have experiences as students and developing teachers that are uniquely related to their racial, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. These experiences may not be noticed, understood or valued by their predominantly White teacher educators. The purpose of this…

Recent science education reform has emphasized teaching science as practice -- striving to engage students in the authentic work of scientists so they gain deeper understanding of scientific knowledge and how that knowledge is established. To make this vision of science education a reality in classrooms, teachers must be well prepared to teach…

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how and why educators who conducted an action research project to satisfy the completion requirements of an online early childhood education graduate program continue to use action research to inform practice and create social change in educational settings. The theoretical framework incorporated…

The Student Participation Observation Tool (SPOT) is a web-based classroom observation protocol developed for higher education STEM courses and based on research on evidence-based practices. The low-inference and objective nature of the SPOT and visual outputs make it an optimal tool for teaching professional development. The SPOT allows novice…